Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal is the first book in a series of mystery novels with heroine Maggie Hope set in London in WWII.

The beginning of a book tells the reader a lot of things about the story they are about to read. They either decide they are interested and can’t wait to read on or they decide to put the book down and move onto more promising reads. MacNeal knows her genre well and this novel starts off with a wonderful atmosphere, some impending doom, a false scare, and lastly – what we all hope for in a good mystery novel – a murder.

If this book has a fault (and that is a big “if”) it is that after the exciting prologue things seems to stagnate for a while and nothing really big happens in the way of plot. Maggie gets a job working for the Prime Minister and we are introduced to the people that matter in her life and her back story. However, in a poetic way, this actually works with the story mirroring Britain hovering in “the bore war” as they waited for the inevitable air assault from Germany. The excitement and action do begin again in earnest after the bombs begin falling on Britain and after this event it hardly lets up. All the effort that went into what I would call the first act to set up the backstory of the characters and their emotional ties, pays off big time in act two because MacNeal can focus much more fully on the action itself without having to over explain why the characters feel or act a certain way.

MacNeal did meticulous research for this novel, adding to the ability of the reader to immerse themselves in the story. Often when dealing with a historical novel the author can overtax its readers with long passages on history or, a much worse offense, simply omit it altogether and allow the reader to fill in the gaps themselves. In this case it is obvious that MacNeal soaked up the time period and the people as much as she could before she began writing. She steeped herself in British culture, the landscape of London, the war records, and real-life people who lived through the war and worked with Mr. Churchill. The research is so thorough that the reader feels as if they have actually been transplanted back in time and can visualize, feel, smell, and hear London as it was back then.

Certain things really help to enhance the believability of this story: the dialogue the characters undertake regarding their political views in multiple scenes includes viewpoints not only from the British, but from the Irish and the tensions caused by the IRA, from Americans, and even from German sympathizers. If these characters had lived in London during that time, and especially if they were working with the PM all of these issues would have been on the forefront of their minds and so their inclusions were not only important but necessary.

The descriptions of the British people’s customs and national personality were not only accurately, but I think, lovingly portrayed as only one with a deep appreciation and connection with the culture could manage. I found myself actually wondering if MacNeal were British or American herself (before you Google it, she’s American), which is some of the highest praise I can render given my own love for the British culture. The little bit of humour infused into the novel is also befitting to an English mystery novel. British humour is its own entity, and I believe the humour presented is quite the right style. For example, on page 14 a character states, “There’ll be no blood, toil, tears, or sweat until I have some goddamned tea.” And on page 66 the PM makes a joke about labels for boxes of 12-inch gun muzzle protectors stating “I want a label for every box… saying ‘British, size medium.’ That will show the Nazis…who’s the master race!”

MacNeal also has a wonderful handle on the landscape of London – how rails were torn down for metal for munitions, the protection of important monuments such as St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the blackout covers for the windows. Her descriptions are, at times, breathtaking, and are often used to set up a coming scene. For example on page 42, after a paragraph description of Herrick Street, MacNeal concludes with, “Under the heaviness of the water droplets, flowering trees wept pale pink petals down into the gutters.” and on page 121, describing the attack of the Luftwaffe “There were hundreds…of planes circling overhead, black insects against the sky, leaving silvery vapor trails against the blood-red clouds, darkening in the setting sun.”

MacNeal’s dedication to research didn’t just apply to her rendering of Wartime Britain – but also to her main character, Maggie. Maggie is supposed to be a math whiz of sorts and, before the war, was going to study at the prestigious MIT University. So when it comes time for Maggie to use her skills in coding, it is important to the integrity of the character that a little something about codes is actually conveyed to the reader. MacNeal could have taken the lazy way out and used any number of literary tricks to avoid actually having to spell out or make any codes, but she didn’t. We, as a reader, are actually walked through numerous codes from beginning to end, making Maggie’s character very believable and concrete.

The last bit of research that was necessary to make this story a success was dedicated to the person of Winston Churchill himself. The interactions that Mr. Churchill has with Maggie and the various other characters are obviously fictional representations, but as MacNeal spent a great deal of time in conversation with actual private secretaries for Mr. Churchill, I think we can rest assured that if the PM had really met any of MacNeal’s characters, his exchanges with them would be quite close to how MacNeal describes them. The charisma of Churchill is very evident as his sometimes unruly behaviour, and even a touch of that marvelous wit he was known for. It is a tricky thing to represent a real person in a work of fiction, but I think that MacNeal treated the person of Churchill with respect and honesty and her rendering of him feels very natural and true.

Another point that MacNeal delivered the goods on was that in all the best mysteries it is never enough to have one encompassing mystery to focus on, but rather you need to egg your readers on by introducing more and more intrigue as the storyline continues. This book has multiple mysteries that need solving ranging from the murder in the prologue, to the truth about what happened to Maggie’s parents, to the outcome of a plot to hand Britain over to the Nazis to a big twist involving one of the main characters. Each story is interesting in itself, but MacNeal made good use of switching between different stories to build suspense in each one and matching the level of excitement and climax in each story to keep the reader wanting to read on. MacNeal also made sure to give each mystery a personal edge to at least character so that there is a satisfying payoff not only in terms of action and suspense, but also emotionally for the reader.

Knowing this book was to have sequels, I was looking for a few things out of the ending – all of which I got. There was excitement and action almost up to the last, which leaves the reader feeling satisfied and engaged and also hints that there will be more action to come in the next books. It was also important for the reader to have a proper ending for Maggie’s first adventure and MacNeal handles her denouement perfectly with just the right amount of reflection on events past, plans for the future, and a beautifully worded, hopeful last paragraph.

So, if you’re like me, you’ll be heading out to grab a copy of Princess Elizabeth’s Spy after you finish Mr. Churchill’s Secretary.

Jodi Picoult is an author that needs no introduction as she has sat atop the New York Times Best Seller list numerous times in her career. This was, however, the first book of hers that I have read and I must say it is easy to see why she belongs on such a prestigious list, at least for this book. Her storytelling is sincere and thought-provoking, and while I may have both negative and positive remarks on the novel as a whole, there is no doubt in my mind that she puts her soul into her art and that is the mark of a true writer.

The book centres mostly around Sage, a twenty-something year old, who works nights at a bakery so she can hide a scar on her face that she feels makes her terribly unattractive. Her night job also enables her to hide from her grief over her dead parents, and her shameful secret relationship with a married man. During the day she attends a grief counselling group once a week and it is there that she meets an old German man, Josef, who quickly becomes her confidant. But everything changes for Sage when Josef confesses to her that he was a Nazi soldier stationed at the very same concentration camp that her Jewish grandmother was held at. Sage reports Josef to the FBI and an investigation begins to discover if this man, whom everyone believes to be one of the nicest old men in town, is really who he claims he was.

Through hearing Josef’s story, the FBI agent’s story, and Minka’s story some very real issues are raised about the intertwining of good and evil in each human being, as well as the question of forgiveness, vengeance and justice. This book would make a very good addition to any high school study of the holocaust because it acutely raises these questions but never implies there is a simple black and white solution. For example, on page 106 Sage asks of Leo, the FBI agent, “Is his work vengeance? Or justice? There is a fine line between the two, and when I try to focus on it, it becomes smaller and less clear.”. Or later, when Josef is done telling his story and he states, “What I mean to tell you, now, is that the same truth holds. This could be you, too. You think never. You think, not I. But at any given moment we are capable of doing what we least expect.”

The story is compelling and the subject matter important, but when it came to dissecting the actual writing of the story, however, I found myself a bit disappointed. To begin with, as a caveat, I will admit that I am a literary fiction reader and so my review comes from the bias of someone who is used to that kind of a book. The thing about Picoult is that she is fully capable of writing sentences and paragraphs that simply drip with beauty, but she doesn’t seem willing to do that full time in this story. As I began to read the book I found little gems here and there, such as on page 8, “You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion”, but I found myself hungering for more. It bothered me that an author obviously able to write with force would allow her writing to fall into a more typical style.

Until I got to part 2. Part 2 of the novel is a tour de force and truly an achievement; it is so visceral and real. This section of the novel deals entirely with the story of a holocaust survivor and I admire the fact that this section in itself takes up well over 150 pages; it would seem shameful, almost, to try to put down the recollections of a survivor (even a fictional one) in a single chapter. Picoult’s dedication to details in this time period, and her researching of historic facts, as well as her obvious knowledge of real survivors makes this section feel real. We’ve all read holocaust survivor stories before, but I must admit that this rendition was perhaps the hardest one I have ever read; for though the characters were not real, their experiences were. This is where Picoult really shines as an author as well as her voice through Minka is a beautiful piece of literature, of story, of truth. Her descriptions in this section are breathtaking, for example on page 209 as she describes SS soldiers, “They smelled like hatred.” Everything took on a new life and I suppose this was intentional as Minka was a writer herself. As hard as it was to read about the atrocities of the holocaust, I found myself revelling in the beautiful way it was written.

I know that there is a need, especially in a story such as this where multiple characters are written in first person, to vary your voice and vocabulary and that was likely why Picoult chose to reserve her most visceral writing for Minka, but I still found myself wishing she had found a way to put more of that kind of writing into her other characters. Instead I found that when compared to Minka everyone else felt rather shallow and one-dimensional and that is a shame given the statements the novel is attempting to make.

Picoult’s use of a literary device of a separate story intertwining throughout the book actually confused me greatly when I first started it. The book actually begins with the start of a different tale in italics, a prologue of sorts, of a young girl sitting in a bakery with her father. As I said, this confused me at first, as I had no idea who these characters were, where they were, or even what time they were supposed to be in. I think that Picoult could have found some creative way to anchor these characters right from the get-go instead of leaving them in limbo for as long as she did. It drew away from the story itself for me, because I was constantly trying to figure out what this story meant. However, the book is called “The Storyteller” and perhaps Picoult meant for us to simply assume that there would be a story apart from the main narrative. In any case once the story is explained it mirrors the events that unfold in the book beautifully and helps to enforce and deepen the themes.

When the book returns to Sage’s story from Minka’s I found myself focusing on a few things I wish Picoult could have done better after such an incredible feat of writing. For starters there is a great deal of stress placed on the fact that Sage thinks she is ugly because of a horrible scar on her face. This scar is alluded to again and again, but the story of its origin is painstakingly hidden. Too painstakingly. When telling a story it is important to have these little secrets to keep your readers interested and wanting to know what happens, but in this case I feel like it was more than a long time coming. The story of her scar seems like it would naturally be told so many times before it actually is so that I can actually feel the effort that went into not revealing it -this, to me, seems a bit clumsy.

The other issue around the scar and Sage’s apparent self-worth issues is that they just seem to disappear without any real motivation or resolution beyond meeting a new man. Perhaps it is the feminist in me, but I was sort of hoping for a bigger “ah-ha” moment in the story for Sage after reading for pages about how she hid from life than her finding a boyfriend. It seems to me that she wakes up one day and decides she’s okay with everything without ever really dealing with any of her issues head-on.

This book also had a few predictable moments in it in terms of the connections the characters would make, but there is one very good twist that Picoult saves for the very end of the book that brings chills to the spine. It is this chilling twist that actually made me feel the dénouement of the story was not quite what it could have been. This book asks a lot of big questions about forgiveness, about the good and evil in each of us, and about the effect of terrible deeds to not only victims but to perpetrators, and it felt to me that in light of these questions, in light of the amazing part 2 of the book that the ending came a little too soon and a little too ungraciously. I was expecting some enlightenment in the final paragraphs but instead all I felt was a distinct dullness inside.

If, however, Picoult’s intention with her ending was to get people to think about the book long after they’d finished it, she succeeded completely. In this way Picoult shows herself truly an artist for she has created something that requires a response of some kind. It is simply not possible to read this book and not have it sit under your skin and dare you to not think about it.

What I must end with is simply this: that I have only scratched the surface of this book and of Picoult’s dedication to her craft. While I have a few disappointments leading me to give this book a lower rating than my previous reviews, I still say that it is well worth the read.

Strings Attached by award-winning author, Judy Blundell, is a definite must read for lovers of young adult fiction that packs some depth and brilliance instead of just fluffy teenage romances, vampires, or books about the cool kids at school.

The story follows the life of Kit Corrigan, a teenage dancer from Rhode Island trying to make it to Broadway in New York City in 1950. She has fled from her family home, her on-again-off-again relationship with her boyfriend Billy, and has landed smack dap in the clutches of her boyfriend’s controlling father, Nate Benedict. Nate is offering Kit a way to make it in the big city in return for the seemingly simple promise of any news Kit might receive from Billy.

I must admit when I first began the novel I felt a little like the author had just thrown me in the middle of something without giving me a sense of time or place. Every writer knows that one of your first jobs in telling a story is to tell the audience where they are, when they are, and who they are with. Judy just plunges her reader into the middle of the story on page one and you are left feeling distinctly out of the loop. I had previously read What I Saw and How I Lied, and knew the caliber of writing Judy was capable of so I kept going. And I’m so very glad I did.

I guessed right from the get-go that Judy’s dropping of her reader in the middle of the story was more than likely a device to increase suspense and interest. At first it felt cheap to me. I thought, okay just give me the background and get on with it! But then I realized that Judy was dedicated not to just telling the current story about Kit Corrigan in New York in 1950, but of where Kit came from, who her family was, and how she got to where she was.

In fact by the time I reached chapter 4 (which is page 30) I found it impossible to put the book down. Judy is a master of story and even though I knew that Kit obviously had to end up in New York in 1950 I found my heart racing to find out the details of a specific story that happened in 1935 or 1947. The chapters are linked by clever devices that makes the stories told seem real. For instance the presence of a balloon in the present will remind Kit of a story that involved balloons when she was a child, and it is precisely connectors like these that make this story feel authentic in its narrative.

Judy’s descriptions are breathtaking as well. Whether it’s the simple description of an object in a room, the palpable tension between our young heroine and a sinister older man, or the aching honesty of young love the reader is gripped and plunged right into the moment head first. Phrases like “Lust, liquor, and legs – that’s where I came from. That’s who I was.” and ” Suddenly, I realized that he wasn’t holding me in an embrace. He was holding me up, or preparing to, and the first alarm began to clang inside me.” are littered about in this novel as if these kinds of apt deductions about life and human interaction are commonplace in every piece of literature rather than something special.

The history and place of New York in 1950 is expertly researched, as well as Rhode Island in the 1930’s and 40’s. You get a definite sense of the sights, quality of air, culture, and changes that were happening during those decades. The dialogue used by the characters is also appropriate for the time period in which it is set and Judy doesn’t fall into the trap of throwing in cultural phrases just because she has to – it all feels very natural. There are a few scenes between Kit and some chorus girls that are full of the authentic kind of banter you’d find back stage at any sort of show that really highlight Judy’s knack for getting into the culture and feel of a time and place.

As a young adult novel it does navigate a lot of the same issues you would find in any old book for teens, but they are handled not with a blatant “here’s the issue”, but rather with something much better and something that gains my respect – they are handled with a story. Judy expertly navigates themes of love, betrayal, friendship, secrets, lies, and in the end beautifully brings all of these things together in a way that shows no life and no decision is completely unattached to another in a thrilling climax that also ties together the snippets life stories of all of the main characters.

A five out of five stars for sure and a must read not just for young adults, but for adult adults too!